Social media is now a must-have tool for many companies out there. Are these businesses using social media to their full potential, though?
Simply creating a profile , and posting random content once in a while is not enough anymore. In reality, it was never. But, a lot of businesses don’t seem to have a clearly-defined strategy of marketing using social media that could bring them success.
It might not be a big issue at first however, not having a clear social media plan and a well-planned workflow can mean you aren’t seeing benefits from your social marketing strategies via Inflact.
If you commit your time and energy to making it right, you can easily set your goals and achieve them in a flash. In this article, you’ll discover how to develop your social media plan.
First things first — what is a plan for social media?
A social media strategy, in other words a strategy for social media is ultimately an insightful summary of what you intend on doing and hope to achieve on your social media pages. Planning a carefully thought-out plan for your company’s activities with regard to your social media presence is highly beneficial. The more specific and detailed your strategy is, the better your performance will be.
In the event that your social media channels perform well, the brand’s reputation will rise, you’ll gain more customers Your social proof will be seen and your business will gain more credibility. This all contributes to strengthening your position on the market as a professional business.
Now that you know the answer to the question ‘what’s a social media plan?’, we’ll take a look at some interesting statistics before we share with you the ultimate guide to planning the perfect social media strategy.
The importance of social media to businesses in 2022
The times when businesses used social media purely for fun are now a distant memory. Today, it’s about building brand awareness, making profit, providing social proof, and simply improving your business. There is no better evidence than statistics and numbers and let’s take a look at what 2013 has to tell us in terms of social media and its importance:
About 55% of world’s populace are users of social media.
In October 2021, Facebook remains the top most frequently used social media platform, with 2.89 billion users who use it every month. K is the top utilized Social Media platform.
In the average, people spend around 2h 27 minutes per day using social media.
93% of Internet users are on social media.
It can be seen, social media platforms have lots of potential that companies ought to consider investing in order to expand their business. Without further ado, let’s see how to make a social media plan.
How to create a social media plan step-by-step
Knowing how to make a social media plan is not enough. You are probably aware of that. So, without further delay, let’s share the secret recipe to the most effective social media strategy you’ll ever see. If you can create a social media strategy that will be effective it will put you on the right track to achieving your objectives.
1. Determine your starting point.
Realizing where you are at in your social media marketing activities should be the very first step you take. Before you come up with a proper social media plan consider taking a close look at your own profiles and that of your competition. This will allow you to determine the things that work and what doesn’t. What exactly do you need to do? Here’s what we would recommend prior to deciding on a social media marketing campaign:
Create a SWOT analysis in order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your business as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in the business world outside of it.
Perform an PESTEL analysis to investigate your position and find out where your company are in terms of socially, economically, politically, technologically, environmentally, and legally.
Research your competitors as well in your field and figure ways to stand out from them to be unique.
Conduct an audit of your social media to see how, when, and with what results you’ve been sharing your content the moment. This will allow you to assess the potential for growth, as well as things you can do to increase your social media presence.
Tools to use: Creately Competitors.app, Likealyzer, Facebook Analytics, Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, etc.
2. Specify your target group.
Understanding your audience is vital for a successful social media marketing strategy. After all, you should be creating content (from scratch or using curated content) that your intended audience likes, comments on and shares. Luckily, there are a few ways to get to know your target audience.
First, check out which people your content resonates most with. Then, determine whether this group matches the ideal audience for your brand — with leads that are qualified, you can turn your customers into customers within minutes.
Get familiar with relevant surveys, reports and data to gain more insights.
Come up with a few personas to represent that ideal customer. This will basically be an in-depth description of the individuals with real wants and needs, who you wish to make your followers and supporters. Understanding the persona of your typical follower can help you adjust your social media campaigns in accordance with your actual followers’ expectations.
Tools to use: Brand24, Make My Persona, Google Trends, Buzzsumo, YouGov, surveys and industry reports.
3. Analyze your competitors on social media.
In order to develop a successful social media strategy It is important to comprehend your competition. What kind of content are they releasing, what tone are they using and how frequently are they posting?
Take some time to study your competition and find out your own lessons from their experience. Also, be aware of their stats, such as their reach and engagement rates. These can be a great indicator of the quality of your competitors, as well as the amount of possibility there is for you to make it into this niche.
Utilize the information to develop your own strategies.
Be aware of your competitors’ strategies following you’ve developed your content strategy Becoming up-to-date on each step they take will help you stay ahead.
4. Set the goals.
The use of clear and precise goals will enable you to design well-structured and structured campaigns, evaluate the progress you make, and then optimize your social media strategy over the long-term. What is the best way to determine a legitimate target from a vague one? Learn the difference:
VAGUE Objective: I will increase my number of followers on Facebook.
SMART GOAL: By close of the year I’ll raise the rate of engagement for each post on my Facebook page by 22%.
There’s an extremely useful objective model of planning called SMART. It will assist you to set your goals in the planning of an online social media campaign. According to this model your objectives should be:
Specific, meaningful, substantial and straightforward
The ability to measure — meaningful and motivating
Accomplishable — agreed and realizable
Relevant — real, realistic resourced, results-based and resource-focused
Time-bound — time-based, time-limited and time/cost limit
To make it all work, you should:
Establish your expectations and specific goals that are derived from your social media marketing plan. What would you like to accomplish with the social channels you use? Are these goals in line with the overall marketing plan for your company?
Create relevant KPIs for social media (Key Performance Indicators) which should be part of the social media advertising strategy at all times.
Make sure you will be competent to meet your goals.
Beware of»faux metrics! These are numbers that you are able to easily keep in check, but they do not mean much for your business similar to the number of followers on social media does. The most useful KPIs are the following: Engagement rates for your target group; CPA: CPC, CPL, and CPS; Reach and referral visitors to your site.
5. Select the best communication channels.
Social media is so much more than Facebook. If you are looking for the most appropriate platforms for your business, you should look at the advantages of every one of them. In the end, the goal is to select the networks that are utilized by your target audience the most and fit your company’s image at the same time. When you’ve determined which social networks you’ll include in your social media strategy to design an effective social media marketing strategy for every social network.
Be in the place where your ideal audience is. This doesn’t mean that it has for it to be Facebook or Instagram It is possible to find your potential customers on other social media platforms as well. You can check out other most popular social media platforms of 2021 around the world, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, or even Quora.
Get familiar with the requirements and unique features of every platform. For instance, certain social media platforms offer live video streaming services, while others let you benefit from groups.
Once you’ve created your social media plans you can set up accounts for the «missing» accounts, and also improve your existing profiles.
Download our free social media marketing template in PDF. Join our newsletter to never miss any content similar to this ever again.
6. Find the most efficient communication lines and formats for content for every platform.
To diversify your content, you should create unique posts on each social network keeping their features in your mind. You should consider incorporating user-generated content, live videos, stories, and polls in your social media strategy for content, just to mention just a few. The possibilities are endless but you should ensure that at least certain content supports your overall business goals. You could, for instance, decide that a part of your content aims to drive traffic to your blog and another component is designed to aid lead generation, while the rest informs and entertains your audience. The exact proportions are dependent on you, however.
Determine what you intend to communicate. What is most attractive for your target audience?
Identify the content formats you’ll be taking advantage of and ensure that they’re well-designed.
Indicate how often you are going to update your social networks.
Set out your brand’s characteristics If you have any. They could be specific hashtags, using your logo on every image or creating a specific template for all the social posts you make.
Useful tools: Canva, Crello, Easil, Biteable, Recast Studio, Splice, Oodls, Kaboompics.
7. Make your Social Media Marketing plan to work: assign the tasks.
A effective social media marketing strategy often requires a motivated team. It’s not enough to include the best individuals involved, but also to share tasks among them in a responsible manner and then ensure seamless collaboration in order to finish the job efficiently.
Define your social media workflow and assign specific tasks
Determine who is accountable for what part of the social media content strategy (i.e. creating content or images as well as scheduling and approving posts, and moderating the profile),
Use the right tools to facilitate collaboration between team members,
Be sure to include the client (if you have one) — in fact the approval of your client is usually required to keep a specific branding voice. With this type of solution your job becomes more efficient and quick and instead of syncing a lot of emails, you can do everything all in one location for all of your users.
Useful tools: Kontentino, Asana.
8. Find the most appropriate social media tool for your needs.
If you’re talking about tools, you will definitely require one, not just to oversee your team, but also your social media accounts in general, especially if you’re in charge of some of them. In actual fact, a great social media management software often is essential to the marketing of social media.
Take a look at your needs. Rather than jumping straight into research, you must define your goals and priorities before you do anything else.
Do your research. Once you know what you’re searching for, finding instruments that are able to meet your requirements will be much simpler. Actually, you will have the right set of criteria to evaluate the options against.
Test out a few different tools before you decide the one that will fit your business the best.
Useful tools: Kontentino.
9. Organize your content properly.
A calendar with content is an effective method to keep track of any holidays, events along with other dates. In reality, social campaigns based on specific events tend to attract more attention. It’s not the only perk of having a proper calendar for social media, however. It’s easy to organize and schedule your posts (as described by your content strategy) and make sure that you’re maintaining your brand voice across various social networks.
Utilize the tools you use to manage your social media. It’s likely that the software you’ve chosen allows you to build your own calendar of content. Make good use of this option.
Choose your content carefully. Select the best times and frequency that work for your audience.
Make sure to plan your content in advance and keep an alert for new trends and events that could suit your business posting on topics that are trending with hashtags that are popular will allow you to stand out even more.
10. Maximize your reach.
Nowadays, simply posting your content isn’t enough to get lots of attention. However, there are ways to boost your reach.
Invest into paid-for ads. You can easily enhance your posts , and also target the audience you want to. Be sure that they’re optimized.
Make use of retargeting. To make sure your message is heard you should consider targeting people who already know your brand. If you’re interested, you can also use linking retargeting to increase your reach through this method. If that sounds like something that might interest you, check out how to achieve this using Rocketlink.
Partner with influencers. Find influencers with an audience similar to yours, who share attractive content and have a large impact at the same time.
Use other marketing methods to supplement your social media plan. As we’ve said before an effective social media plan should be part in your marketing plan and help you get closer to your business’s goals. If it is possible you shouldn’t put all eggs in the same basket. Instead, consider omnichannel marketing instead.
11. Examine the results and continuously optimize your social media marketing plan.
Finding out what is effective and what’s not your top priority from the start. The more data you keep track of, the more information you will gain — and that’s precisely why you need to keep an eye on how well your content is performing.
Decide how you’re going to track the results (you may take advantage of those native features of each social network or utilize your social media management software to track your results, for instance).
Strive to increase conversions and enhance your social media strategy every day. If you notice that certain posts aren’t performing the way you’d expect them investigate the reason.
Useful tools: Kontentino, Social Blade, Sotrender.
12. Set up KPIs on social media marketing for your company
Your social media marketing key metrics (KPIs) will help you monitor the effectiveness in your marketing strategy and evaluate the return on investment (ROI).
The most common KPIs are:
Engagement rate, or reach within your intended audience
website traffic from social media sources
conversion rates based on social media users
leads generated from social media activity
the revenue that social media generates from marketing
Select the KPIs the most crucial to your company and track them regularly. This will help you determine whether or not your social media strategy is working.
Without KPIs, you’ll never be able to determine what you’re working towards or how your efforts are producing results. Therefore, it is imperative to include KPIs in your social media plan.
Social media strategy — Template
Developing a social media strategy could seem like a lot to think about. If you feel overwhelmed, do not fret. We created a social media strategy template you can download for free:
Download our free Social Media Marketing Strategy Template in PDF. Join our newsletter and not miss this type of content ever again.
A sample of a social media marketing plan:
Now that you know how to create the social media plan (and you even have the template! ) It’s time for you to be inspired and learn from the best. In the end, Nike definitely has one of the most effective social media strategies. This is due to the fact that the brand keeps all posts in line with the athletes they work with by using clear copywriting and a motivational tone of voice, which seems to do wonders among fans and followers (given the stats). Even though Nike has distinct accounts for its various product lines it is evident that they have a carefully thought-out social media plan for each of them.
Domino’s may not be the model for a brilliant marketing strategy for social media, however it’s still definitely worth taking a look at. Domino’s is well-known for its ingenuity when it comes to campaigns for marketing in general. In fact, a lot of them are centered around social media. However, Domino’s does a pretty good job when posting on their pages every day too. Although the content might not be innovative but it’s definitely consistent and often attracts lots of people’s attention.
Another successful example of a successful social media strategy is Missguided. In fact, Instagram appears to be an important channel for this retailer of fashion. It’s no wonder that a balanced mix of user-generated content lifestyle posts, and special offers keep their followers engaged at all times.
Common mistakes of a social media strategy
A lack of a clear objective
Before you can begin to develop any strategy for social media first, you must know the goals you’re trying to reach. Do you want to increase awareness of your brand, drive more visitors to your site or generate more leads?
If you’ve established your purpose, you can create campaigns and content that are aligned with it. If you don’t know your purpose, you’ll have no way to know how effective your efforts will be and your efforts may be wasted.
There are a variety of goals you can have for your social media strategies, however, some of the most popular ones are:
Brand awareness is growing
Driving more website traffic
Generating leads
Increasing customer loyalty and engagement
Assisting with other marketing efforts
Concentrating on vanity metrics
The use of vanity metrics isn’t necessarily good However, you must be careful with them. They don’t provide any information about the results or effectiveness of your Social Media strategy or how much they generate for your business.
Some examples of vanity metrics are:
how many followers are you able to have on your social media channels
the amount of likes and comments you get on your posts
the number of times that your content is either retweeted or shared
If you’re using social media channels as a method of marketing, these metrics aren’t the most important factors to monitor. Focus instead on KPIs which can give a precise overview of how well your marketing campaigns are going and whether they’re yielding revenue.
The wrong audience is not being targeted.
It is important to determine the people you’re targeting through your social media strategies. Simply because you have an impressive following doesn’t guarantee that every individual is the best audience for what you sell or provide.
For instance, if you have an Italian restaurant in Paris It wouldn’t make sense to target people who live in Brussels with your social media strategies. You would be better off targeting people in or around Paris with an interest in that cuisine.
Make sure you know who your intended audience is and are creating appealing content to appeal to them. This will increase the odds for your Social Media strategy being successful.
Inattention to other marketing channels
It’s vital to find out the places where your audience is spending the majority of their time on the internet. If they’ren’t actively engaging with social media You might want to focus on different advertising strategies instead.
If, for instance, a large portion of your targeted segment uses Instagram regularly , it may be more beneficial to invest time and resources into running an Instagram campaign, rather than trying to promote your restaurant via Twitter.
Even if you are using social media channels to promote your business, it doesn’t mean they are the only ones you should be taking note of or focusing on in your strategy.
Posting without a schedule or plan
Having a social media schedule or plan of content before you make any post is vital to the effectiveness for your overall social media marketing strategy. This means that your posts are relevant, timely and consistent with the rest of your marketing efforts. Naturally, you must also be prepared to alter your social media strategy if required.
If you don’t have a plan or schedule for your posts, they are likely to be scattered all over everywhere and may not be efficient. A content calendar will help you stay on track and avoid this problem.
Insufficiently using social media to its full potential
It’s easy to post content and then leave it at that. But if you want that your approach to social media succeed You must go an extra step.
Create value by creating engaging posts that give people useful information or suggestions on topics they are interested in. It is also possible to run contests giveaways, surveys, or contests to get your readers involved.
This will allow you to build a loyal group of followers who do not just keep track of what’s happening in your company, but also because they enjoy interacting with you online.
How to develop the social media plan in a short manner
Now when someone asks you «What’s a good social media strategy?’, you will be able to answer that question. Although creating an effective strategy for social media may appear to be a lot of work but in reality, it’s quite simple. Learning how to make the right social media plan is highly beneficial for companies who want to increase their social media presence and grow their business. If you have a good plan and establish your social media workflow managing multiple social media accounts will be naturally. That’s precisely why you should invest some time in beginning to make sure your social media strategy is in order and pick an effective social media management tool that can organize your content across all social media platforms.
Social Media Blog 